Marcus fought wildly for control of the weapon, but the mercenary was larger, stronger, and trained for close-quarters combat. He slammed his elbow into Marcus’s injured arm, sending the younger man crashing to the carpet with a cry of pain.

The mercenary turned his weapon back toward me.

I didn’t have a gun. I didn’t have armor. All I had was the heavy silver pen I had pulled from Dad’s lectern during the initial chaos, and five years of military close-combat training.

I ducked beneath his arm as he raised the pistol, driving the sharp point of the silver pen directly into the nerve cluster beneath his forearm.

The mercenary grunted, his hand reflexively opening. The suppressed pistol clattered onto the carpet.

Before he could recover, I grabbed the heavy glass decanter from the side table and swung it with all the force my left arm could generate. It smashed against the side of his head, spraying amber liquid and thick glass fragments everywhere. The man stumbled backward, his knees buckling before he hit the floor unconscious.

Evan scrambled backward out of his executive chair, knocking over his laptop screens.

“Caroline—wait! Please!” he gasped, backing against the floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the club’s private gardens. “We’re family! You wouldn’t betray your own brother!”

“You betrayed me the moment you let Daniel die,” I said, picking up the fallen pistol from the floor and clearing the chamber. “And you betrayed every sailor who stepped onto a ship equipped with your faulty hardware.”

“It was Dad’s idea!” Evan whimpered, his hands raised in surrender. “He told me to wipe the server logs! He told me to send the mercenary to Dr. Vance’s hotel!”

“Where is Vance?” I demanded, pointing the weapon at his chest. “Call off the team at the hotel. Now.”

Evan pulled out his phone with trembling hands, his fingers slick with sweat. He hit a quick-dial key and pressed the speakerphone button.

“Abort,” Evan said into the phone. “Abort the target at the Plaza Hotel.”

A voice answered over the speaker—cold, mechanical, and unfamiliar. “Negative, primary. Target is already acquired. Execution in T-minus four minutes.”

The line went dead.

My chest tightened. “Where is Dr. Vance staying?”

“Room 1402… The Plaza Hotel,” Evan stammered. “On 5th and Main.”

I turned to Marcus, who was slowly pushing himself up from the floor, clutching his bleeding shoulder. “Can you walk?”

“I can drive,” Marcus gritted out. “My car is in the underground parking bay.”

“Caroline!” a sharp voice called out from the doorway.

Celeste stood in the broken frame of the suite door. She wasn’t wearing her glittering emerald dress anymore; she had thrown a black coat over her shoulders, her mascara smeared beneath her eyes, her posture rigid with fury.

“You’ve completely ruined everything,” she said, her voice dropping into that familiar, quiet venom she had used on me since childhood. “Dad is downstairs having a heart attack, the police are breaching the front gates, and your little stunt is going to end up on the front page of every newspaper in the country.”

“Good,” I said, stepping past her toward the hallway. “It’s about time the world saw what the Harringtons look like without their money.”

Celeste grabbed my shoulder—the damaged one.

A sharp, searing spike of pain shot through my back, pulling a gasp from my throat.

“You don’t get to walk away,” Celeste whispered fiercely into my ear. “You were always the weak one, Caroline. The quiet one. You think putting on a Navy uniform makes you special? You’re just the broken girl who couldn’t handle living in our shadow.”

I turned slowly, looking her straight in the eyes.

With my left hand, I grabbed her wrist, twisting it back until she was forced to let go.

“I didn’t survive a missile strike in the Arabian Sea to be intimidated by a socialite in an expensive coat,” I whispered back.

I shoved her back against the doorframe, grabbed Marcus, and ran for the service stairs that led down to the parking garage.

Behind us, the siren alarms of the city police began to wail in the distance, drawing closer with every second.